Steenhuisen: Strong leadership and smart voter choices can turn South Africa around

Key topics:

• DA-run municipalities outperform ANC with cleaner audits and efficiency

• Fixing SA needs better governance, anti-corruption, and voter choices

• Public safety, economy, and services must serve citizens, not elites

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By John Steenhuisen*

South Africans ask me regularly: “Can we get out of this mess? How can we fix what is broken?“

The answer is simple. It doesn’t have to be like this. The Democratic Alliance can fix South Africa, and has done so in those municipalities it runs.

President Cyril Ramaphosa has finally admitted what the South African nation has known for some time: the DA runs municipalities better than the ANC does.

After calling on his party to learn from better-run municipalities, he said, “I can name it here because there’s nothing wrong with competition. They are often DA-controlled municipalities. We need to ask ourselves, what is it that they are doing that is better than what we are doing?”

The answer to the President’s question is straightforward. The DA runs municipalities to serve the voters, is intolerant of corruption and appoints competent people instead of deploying cadres.

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In DA-run areas, every cent of taxpayer money is defended against corruption and properly managed to produce professional, value-for-money results. This explains why 92% of DA-run municipalities (23 of 25) have received a clean audit. Of the 176 municipalities won by the ANC in 2021, just 14, or 8%, managed such a clean audit. Only the DA-run City of Cape Town received a clean audit of the eight metros nationwide.

Would you give a job to the person who achieved 92%, or someone who got just 8%?  

While the DA is laser-focused on delivering to the people, Ramaphosa and the ANC care more about elites. It was only when the G20 was scheduled for Johannesburg that Ramaphosa suddenly noticed that the city was a mess.

“The environment that one observed in Johannesburg was not a pleasing environment. I say this so that we can improve immensely,” he said.

Ramaphosa wants the visiting G20 heads of state to look out the windows of their limos and see a city that is functional even if it means just fixing the roads between the five-star hotels and the conference centre.

Better choices

There is a better way, which demands a better government. And that, in turn, rests on some voters making better choices.

Fixing SA requires a collective mindset and action. To fix the country, we have to build South Africa’s political centre to enable growth through better policy and governance.

The DA is an essential part of this goal, a key force for positive change. We will work with other parties to ensure that those who broke the country do not remain in power because the opposition is divided and weak.

We will do so by putting the needs of people at the centre of politics.

Voters deserve the very best service the country can offer, not the leftovers after tender deals have siphoned off money to a small politically connected elite.

The leadership of our police force is in a disgraceful state, as we are learning from the Madlanga Commission, which exposes a rotten core in the SAPS.

Following the State Capture saga, many South Africans are numbed to this state of affairs, and have given up.

But they should not be. They should be angry, and they should demand a government that can fix this, and return politics to the people.

To fix this, we need to take the politics out of policing and return to the core mission: Making South Africa a safe country where crime is not tolerated, where the corrupt and the crooks are in jail.

Fight hard to be heard

We will make the connection between foreign trips and the local economy. We need to fight hard to be heard in a world that is focused on wars and rising populism. Our foreign service must be charged with attracting investment and persuading the world why South Africa is the place to be.

In order to do this, we must rethink our approach to the economy to remove red tape and regulations that stop investment and make life hard for those who want to start businesses.

We will not put our troops in harm’s way without adequate equipment and support. It’s time we equipped and trained our security forces to deal with the real risks we face in our neighbourhood instead of sending them unprepared and under-armed to conflict zones where they pay with their lives. We must stop sending soldiers with knives to the gunfights in Africa. And we must focus on dealing with escalating violent crime in our own backyard before trying to solve problems elsewhere.

We will make our border posts the most efficient one-go – rather than one-stop – conduits for trade in Africa. Like our ports, these efficiencies will be internationally benchmarked, and their administration and their systems will be changed if they don’t deliver what citizens require.

We will not expect South Africa’s people to achieve the impossible every day, while politicians look after their needs first.  

South Africans are a hopeful, optimistic people, but there are very few who believe the ANC can turn this country around after thirty years of failure. The reason why the ANC has proven incapable of fixing potholes and turning the electricity back on is that they have not owned up to their failings.

Part of the problem

Until they can do so, the ANC is part of the problem, and not the solution.

The DA is instead the tried-and-tested answer to SA’s governance and growth challenge. Where we govern, services are delivered and the economy grows, creating jobs.

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But we can’t do this alone. Voters need to play their part. A better future is down to you, to your choice. Think carefully about how you use that vote. Will you be enabling better governance or propping up failure? Will you be investing your taxes in a safe and secure government where they are accessed to improve your life, or will you be donating your money to a web of crooked tenders?

The voters are the heroes of this story, not politicians. We are here to serve you, not the other way around. And yet the mindset that goes with many politicians is that of privilege, not service, of first-class travel in comfort and motorcades, while citizens struggle to work on foot or in minibuses, and often at risk to life and limb.

South Africa is your country. It runs on your taxes. But it is run according to your choice.

*John Steenhuisen is the leader of the Democratic Alliance, and Minister of Agriculture in the Government of National Unity.

This article was first published by Daily Friend and is republished with permission